‘It is for this reason that I never go to my field at this time of day but wait instead until I can be alone. Only then, in my experience, will it show me a secret.’
Charlotte Stroud on the secrets of the countryside.
Review | Anthony Oliveira’s Queer Retelling of the Bible by Esmee Wright
‘To the enigmatic prose of the Bible, Oliveira layers meaning upon those ruins, not to move the story on, but to give voice to the unspoken fear.’
Esmee Wright reviews Anthony Oliveira’s Dayspring.
Review | Ali Lewis’s Absence by Nicola Healey
‘It is a book that engages thought and ideas more than feeling; this is poetry as extreme metaphysical sport.’
Nicola Healey reviews Ali Lewis’s Absence.
Review | Capote and the Treachery of the Decade by Hallam Bullock
‘As with all tortured artists, we are often more comfortable recoiling at their wounds than considering them.’
Hallam Bullock on Answered Prayers and Capote’s Women.
Interview | Between Fiction and Reality with Amélie Cordonnier by Erik Martiny
‘On social media, Twitter and text messages, I do try to couch my messages in eloquent, pithy words though. It seems important to me.’
Erik Martiny talks to Amélie Cordonnier.
Poetry | Temporary Shores by Holly Pollard
‘And again – I arrive to set out my fears, / to still rot in watery luck.’
New poetry by Holly Pollard.
Review | Biba: A Legacy Lost and Found by Deborah Nash
‘As our high streets struggle to survive changing shopping habits, brought by the pandemic, the rising cost of living and online purchasing, perhaps we need to revisit Biba’s spirit of playfulness, optimism and laughter – an opportunity unfortunately missed by this show.’
Deborah Nash on The Biba Story at The Fashion and Textile Museum.
Review | The Brightness of a Single Instance by Hannah Hutchings-Georgiou
‘Kneeling in peace or protest, Ono asks us to pick up the scissors, the pen or the match so as to creatively strike out, seek peace and light up the dark.’
Hannah Hutchings-Georgiou reviews Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind.
Interview | Phoebe Stuckes on her chilling debut, Dead Animals
‘Our world is quite self-validating at the moment, and not always for the right reasons.’
We spoke to Phoebe Stuckes about her debut novel, Dead Animals, out today.
Interview | Can Sun’s Playful yet Profound Sculptural Universe
‘I hope my works, whether they are playful or cruel, can more or less point towards the ultimate proposition — absurdity.’
We spoke to Can Sun about his forthcoming show, Brusies, at Mandy Zhang Art.
Interview | An Interview with Megan McDowell
‘At the time that I was reading it and falling in love with it, I wasn’t thinking, “Oh, I want to be a translator.” But that book started my love affair with translated literature as a reader.’
Terry Craven talks to Megan McDowell, one of the judge’s for this year’s Desperate Literature Short Story Prize.
Interview | The Radical Fabrics of Marcellina Akpojotor
‘For me, it’s a beautiful experience to be able to feel the materials with my hands while working.’
We spoke to Marcellina Akpojotor about her forthcoming show, Joy of more Worlds, at Rele Gallery.
Fiction | A Brief History of Dogs in Barcelona by Kieran Wyatt
‘I noticed she had listed three options. To hurt her. To get her attention. To make a point. I remembered learning about the rule of three at school, and I realised that it was probably a universal thing – or maybe she only used three examples when she spoke English.’
New fiction by Kieran Wyatt.
Fiction | Sump by Sheila Armstrong
‘When you are unhappy wherever you go, the common denominator is you, Teddy’s ex-girlfriend told him, with a cruelty so uncharacteristic as to be true.’
New fiction by Sheila Armstrong.
Review | The Truth about My Mother by Lucy Thynne
‘In A Woman’s Story, Ernaux more than fills de Beauvoir’s feminist and existentialist shoes. And as the family’s ‘archivist’, she is every bit the dutiful daughter.’
Lucy Thynne on Annie Ernaux’s A Woman’s Story.
Review | Rachael Allen’s God Complex by Elliot C. Mason
‘The demands of the male observer are hidden, his words never breaking through from the silent ubiquity of their god complex.’
Elliot C. Mason reviews Rachael Allen’s God Complex.
Essay | Giving Up by Christiana Spens
‘All at once, it felt nihilistic and misguided. I had been on this extended fast, but it was devoted to absent men and not any real god. As such, there had been no revelation or resolution, no peace.’
Christiana Spens on Lent.
Essay | Frock Consciousness by Katie Tobin
‘So what is the power of literary fashion, then? For me it lies in its virtuality, that imaginary quality of the ekphrastic, something so beautiful that it cannot exist in real life as we know it on the page. That virtuality also ties into the codification of clothing, and how it might suggest something about its wearer without saying as much.’
Katie Tobin on the Bloomsbury Group and fashion.
Review | Care, Spit, and Queer Confessional: 52 Monologues by Jennifer Jasmine White
‘When we confess, we spit something out, something previously secret and slippery, something summoned up from deep inside.’
Jennifer Jasmine White reviews 52 Monologues at the Soho Theatre.
Fiction | Some Woman Doing Crazy Dancing by Jane Messer
‘She was so very, very fortunate, yes, she was.’
New fiction by Jane Messer.
Fiction | Volunteers by Laura Shaine Cunningham
‘For several long minutes, nothing changed. We seemed to be opposite and equal forces.’
New fiction by Laura Shaine Cunningham.
Fiction | Strange Day in Berlin by Gráinne O’Hare
‘I knew that the building had been turned into a block of luxury condos and bore no internal resemblance to the halls my favourite writers would have walked; and I knew it hardly mattered either way, that I could have curled up in Sylvia Plath’s unwashed sheets and it wouldn’t make me a better writer.’
New fiction by Gráinne O’Hare.
Review | In the Countryside Everyone Knows Your Business by Guy Stagg
‘Seen from the other side of the Irish Sea, this looks like a courageous act, and one to wish for more often in English fiction.’
Guy Stagg reviews Colin Barrett’s Wild Houses.
Interview | Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year shortlistee Michael Magee on writing class, masculinity, and his debut, Close to Home
‘I had to find my own distance from the material I was writing, particularly because it was so close to my own experience. In the early stages of composition, I was almost bogged down by it. I didn’t know how to step back.’
Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year shortlistee Michael Magee on his debut novel, Close to Home.